a world of tea drinkers and dragon riders

Books with Great Monsters || Top Ten Tuesday

Villains are all well and good but nothing tickles my fancy more than an original monster for our heroes to fight off. I hope you’re all doing well this Halloween season and have your costumes prepped and ready to go. Whilst I’m not much of a Halloween goer myself (being, well, not American) you can’t deny any excuse to carve faces into pumpkins isn’t a good one!

Halloween / Creepie Freebee

I’ve read a couple of books lately that tickled my Whovian soul pink. (For any non-Whovians out there, that means I like Doctor Who very much). And I thought I would share some of them with you today! these don’t necessarily have to be the bad guys but some really inventive or intimidating creatures summoned from the depths of the author’s imagination. From giant worms to revenge-bent trees, these books have it covered.

1. Duneby Frank Herbert

You would most definitely not want to find yourself coming toe-to-toe with one of these bad boys. Dune is such an interesting book with a very unique setting. But the unfathomably GIAGANTIC sand worms that tunnel their way through the desert land and eat anything on the living surface are a brilliant brainchild of Herbert that I adore. In a very distant sense.

2. Snow & Roseby Emily Winfield Martin

A good amount of trickery with magic fills these pages and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It’s a wonderful children’s mystery as a little magical creature turns wandering persons in the woods into an array of animals. It certainly makes it difficult to try and track down the person you lost when they’re no longer themselves!

3. The Neverland Warsby Audrey Greathouse

Now, I feel a little bad classifying these as monsters but the take on the mermaids from Peter Pan in this book is bang on, in my opinion. Their tricky ways, riddles and desires to only serve themselves are brilliant. I love the lingering threat of them potentially swimming with you – you clinging to them – and drowning you on purpose.

4.Magoniaby Maria Dahvana Headley

The mean people in this book fit the category of ‘monsters’ for me because they’re so mean and weird. This sky-race, that looks humanoid, have birdcages in their lungs where they keep their songbirds that they’re paired with forever. It’s really strange and I’d dearly love to see someone’s interpretation of this on screen.

5. Uprootedby Naomi Novik

Uprooted had a lot of fun and quirky elements going for it but I LOVED the villains of this story. The tree race of people was something very different and their determination to take over and kill off all the humans deserves an applause. I personally think that absorbing someone, rather painfully, into the trunk of a tree is something that belongs on Doctor Who.

6. Frankensteinby Mary Shelley

I think that Frankenstein deserves to be on here because the monster is so unique and weird. He’s completely misrepresented in films and so weirdly erudite and well-spoken in the book. It’s definitely worth reading this classic for the experience that is Frankenstein’s monster having an intelligent argument with Victor himself.

7. White Hartby Sarah Dalton

This one has an array of interesting monsters in it. I can’t quite remember them all now but it’s such an adventure of a book. One of the creepiest was in the second book involving a monster who would spin lies and deceive you into thinking that what you were seeing was real.

8. The Chimesby Anna Smaill

Not quite a monster but still fitting with this theme, we have the music from The Chimes. This is such a unique concept where the world is run by music and causes everyone, each day to forget everything they know. This is honestly such a curious read – I recommend it for the experience.

9. Shadow of the Foxby Julie Kagawa

There are so many monsters to choose from in this book. The demons that are summoned throughout are fearsome and nothing I’d want to meet but in particular, there are some ghouls that are horrifying. The dead who died greedy coming back to kill people who wander by their graves. SPOOKY.

10. To Kill a Kingdomby Alexandra Christo

The sirens in this book are veritable monsters. And they are GLORIOUS. I love how downright violent Christo made them with their habit of tearing out the hearts of their enemies . . . and eating them. Or in the case of our main character keeping a gruesome collection. But nonetheless. I shall never swim in the ocean again because of this book.

That’s a wrap!

What are some of your favourite monsters (good or bad!) that you’ve read about?

Nice list! I also liked Uprooted. It’s interesting that this book has multiple villains, but the most scary one is of course the forest! Snow & Rose sounds like a good book, and also has a beautiful cover.